And the parrot in his cage watched her with his round,
knowing, wicked eye. She, too, looked at him
wildly, murmuring: “Ah! so it’s you!”
He shook his head and continued: “Just
you wait! I’ll teach you how to loaf.”
What happened within her? She felt, she understood
that it was he, the dead man, who had come back, who
had disguised himself in the feathers of this bird
in order to continue to torment her; that he would
curse, as formerly, all day long, and bite her, and
swear at her, in order to attract the neighbors and
make them laugh. Then she rushed for the cage
and seized the bird, which scratched and tore her flesh
with its claws and beak. But she held it with
all her strength between her hands. She threw
it on the ground and rolled over it with the frenzy
of one possessed. She crushed it and finally made
of it nothing but a little green, flabby lump which
no longer moved or spoke. Then she wrapped it
in a cloth, as in a shroud, and she went out in her
nightgown, barefoot; she crossed the dock, against
which the choppy waves of the sea were beating, and
she shook the cloth and let drop this little dead
thing, which looked like so much grass. Then she
returned, threw herself on her knees before the empty
cage, and, overcome by what she had done, kneeled
and prayed for forgiveness, as if she had committed
some heinous crime.
* * * *
*
It was market-day, and from all the country round
Goderville the peasants and their wives were coming
toward the town. The men walked slowly, throwing
the whole body forward at every step of their long,
crooked legs. They were deformed from pushing
the plough which makes the left shoulder higher, and
bends their figures sideways; from reaping the grain,
when they have to spread their legs so as to keep
on their feet. Their starched blue blouses, glossy
as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs
with a little embroidered design and blown out around
their bony bodies, looked very much like balloons
about to soar, whence issued two arms and two feet.
Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the
end of a rope. And just behind the animal followed
their wives beating it over the back with a leaf-covered
branch to hasten its pace, and carrying large baskets
out of which protruded the heads of chickens or ducks.
These women walked more quickly and energetically
than the men, with their erect, dried-up figures,
adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their
flat bosoms, and their heads wrapped round with a white
cloth, enclosing the hair and surmounted by a cap.
Now a char-a-banc passed by, jogging along behind
a nag and shaking up strangely the two men on the
seat, and the woman at the bottom of the cart who
held fast to its sides to lessen the hard jolting.
In the market-place at Goderville was a great crowd,
a mingled multitude of men and beasts. The horns
of cattle, the high, long-napped hats of wealthy peasants,
the headdresses of the women came to the surface of
that sea. And the sharp, shrill, barking voices
made a continuous, wild din, while above it occasionally
rose a huge burst of laughter from the sturdy lungs
of a merry peasant or a prolonged bellow from a cow
tied fast to the wall of a house.
